Stimulus Funding For A Wine Bar?

ARLINGTON, Va.  (WUSA) -- By now, you've probably heard some of the stories about the huge federal stimulus package. Like the claim that the purchase of a single riding mower at a national cemetery helped save 50 jobs.

An Arlington man with a laptop and a whole mess of data has set up a website www.StimulusWatch.org that he hopes all of us can use to police the $787-billion in federal spending.

In Arlington, $100,000 in stimulus money is helping Sybil Robinson start a wine bar. "Banks just turned us away," says the new entrepreneur.

She hopes to open Twisted Vines Bottle Shop and Bistro in November, with the help of a loan from the Small Business Administration. And she doesn't think it's at all strange that the feds are funding a bar along Columbia Pike.

"I actually think this is exactly what the stimulus is supposed to be about. It's about building jobs, building a community, getting people out and helping the economy grow again," says Robinson.

Billions of dollars have gone to help Wall Street. Robinson says this is about helping Main Street.  

Over at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Jerry Brito is the mastermind of www.StimulusWatch.org.  From bridges to wine bars, you can vote on whether a stimulus project makes sense. But more than that, you can add context and perspective, sort the contracts, and figure out if some politician's brother in law is getting rich.

"Folks need to see where the money is going so they can hold there elected officials accountable. And that's why were putting the site up," says Brito.

Millions of people have already hit the site, but the biggest issue so far has been getting enough detail from the feds.

The kind of detail that might change your mind on a loan for a project like Twisted Vines. "We've already brought in a chef to work on the menu. She's going to have two to three people to work in the kitchen with her. We'll have two to three bartenders, three to four servers," says Robinson.

And wasn't saving and creating jobs what the stimulus funding was all about?